So I Think Expect Of Shapurs Father I Desgin Hks Whole Family Holy Shit

So I think expect of Shapurs father I desgin hks whole family holy shit 😂

That escalated quickly……..but it was so much fun.

I even have three more characters but I think this would be much of a spoiler (so let me know if you like to see them aswell)

And for the last one…..her is the new design of Kayra. As I said before there are not so many differences about the new design but I was thinking I share it with you guys anyway.

So somehow the whole story got a bit out of hand. After I reworked Kayra a bit with Picrew (I based myself on the beautiful picture of @tired-reader-writer and changed her eyes and hair and why is her hair so difficult???a bit to make her earring stand out better. I also changed the design of this one again.) I decided to make another OC or to finally give them a face (I will probably rework them again but for now I am very happy).

The first one is Amalia. She is also a slave in Shapur's household and Kayra's best friend since childhood. She was born into slavery and knows no other life outside of slavery. She is a rather quiet person and carries out her tasks conscientiously and properly. She can become very strict if tasks are left undone or not completed immediately. Over the years she has worked her way up to the position of housekeeper (is that what you call it?) and is now basically the boss of all the slaves. She married another slave from Shapur's household and together they have a daughter.

The next one is Nasha, Amalias daughter and nine years old. She is a complete tomboy and is always giving her mother a headache because she rarely behaves like a young girl and certainly not like a slave. She loves her mother's stories about Kayra and idolizes her (so it's no wonder she's temperamental). Even though she doesn't know Kayra personally, she is her biggest fan and hopes to be able to travel with her someday. She loves Shapur and Isfan and keeps trying to persuade them to take her hunting (after all, she made Shapur promise that she could go with her when she turns 13). She will play an important role in the story.

The next one is Ashina (the name means the she-wolve). In my AU she is Isfans mother and for Kayra like a substitute mother after she lost her own. I tried to give her a few characteristics of Isfan, like the color of her eyes and hair. I have to say that I'm pretty happy with how Ashina turned out. I think she radiates something simple and yet beautiful and motherly, just like I imagined Isfan's mother would be. Of course, that's my idea and everyone can have their own and implement it. That's the great thing about fictional characters.

The next one in the list is Yamin. His name means the just. Unfortunately, he will play a tragic role in the story and will encounter betrayal. Even if, from his perspective, it is justice. I don't want to give too much away here, just that he is also a slave in Shapur's household and is two years older than Kayra and was or still is in love with her. Just like Amalia, he was born into slavery and worked his way up under Shapur and now holds a high position within the household, which has also allowed him to ally himself with the Lusitanians. But as I said, I don't want to give too much away.

The next one is Lady Ziva! Dhe is Shapurs mother and I try to make her a little bit dark and I think she has something witchy about her. She looks beautiful but I try to put a lot of jewelry on her to show that she is more the material type and I think when I look at her and then at Ashina I think they are two sides of a medal.

Both beautiful women but Ashina is more natural, she has more lightness. Ziva on the other hand has some dark aura around her something heavy. (Don’t know if this makes sense).

I am not quite sure with her eye color. For now I decided to gave her the eye color similar to Shapur.

So the next one is Shapurs grandmother Halima. Her name means the gentle/the friendly one and that was her nature too. She was the exact opposite of her daughter-in-law and her youngest son. In my AU, Shapur inherited most of his traits from his grandmother, in addition to some of his uncle's characteristics. He also had the closest relationship with her. She was his confidante and advisor. She was the good soul of the house and was also friendly and respectful towards the slaves. She immediately took Kayra into her heart and immediately recognized that she was different from the others and made sure that she received a good education.

And the Last one is Lord Mert and he is Shapurs and Isfans uncle and the older brother of Lord Shapurs father. He was an commander under King Osroes and also Shapurs and Kunards teacher. Sadly he died really early when Misr try to invade Pars. He was a very good and cheerful person but also very cheeky. He didn’t get the chance to meet Isfan but he loves Shapur as if it was his own son. He never married and so after his and his brothers death Shapur became the new heir of the family. Also Shapur never really got over his uncle's death, probably because he was closer to him than to his own father and his uncle took better and more loving care of him.

More Picrew Firelight AU characters! Have the "royal" family of Maar - the current as well as two versions of Eldar.

From upper left to lower right:

Crownprince Aleksi, Queen Serrilda, Dowager Queen Moja and Farzin, the Elvenking.

And the two versions of Eldar, the Fireking - I can't decide between white or red hair. Which one looks best?

Have undercut Kashi made w this picrew since I pretty much gave up on making Kazai (have not attempted Ayunnen yet but...)

Oh my god...

I forgot how annoying Alfarid was in the beginning! And how hypocritical. Dear lord above (or below).

I am so happy that she later has such a big character development. She now is one of my favourit characters. (And that is the genius of Arakawas writing! Or rather of Tanaka...)

I am continuing chapter 5 and am now where Narsus and Alfarid are at the village that go attacked by Team Zahhak.

Arslan Senki Chapter 128 (Part 1)

We've finally reached it. The Worst Coronation Ceremony in the World. As I'd hoped would be the case, it's a split chapter, with the first half sticking with Team Arslan before the second half moves to Ecbatana to focus on Team Hilmes.

The chapter opens with the gang sitting around a campfire.

An owl... Do Team Zahhak have someone watching them? Are we going to see that someone report back to the Master soon about how Prince Arslan now has Rukhnabad? Yeah sometimes an owl is just an owl but this really has Team Zahhak vibes.

Arslan trying to ask Don Ricardo to hand Rukhnabad to him, realising he doesn't speak Parsian, and then... managing to speak some fragmented Lusitanian? 👌 I love that he's been learning this and is willing to try instead of just asking Estelle to translate.

Who wouldn't immediately hand over the sword that saved your life upon seeing this face, amirite?

(Obviously, it worked. Totally disarmed, Don Ricardo gives Arslan the sword.)

Anyway now we have RUKHNABAD PLOT TWIST, because Arslan can't draw the sword. And while he's all 'welp, looks like I don't have the right to wield it!' Gieve is absolutely fucking enraged by the fact that Hilmes could draw the sword and yet Arslan can't. Gieve = not the greatest fan of Kaykhusraw's judgement, lmao.

The next section is interesting. After things are briefly disrupted by the tremors of an earthquake that soon dies down, discussion continues, and despite Arslan's recognition that his bloodline gives him no right to the throne, he's not backing down.

This panel... The fact that the (harmless) earthquake started up right when Gieve was trashtalking Kaykhusraw, lmao. Feels like the Hero King's spirit was putting Gieve in his place, ahaha.

The fact that he says this while looking down at Rukhnabad... I think this panel is conveying not only that he's not prepared to give it (and Pars) up to anyone else even if they can wield it and he can't, but also that the sword's function as a (protective) object of importance to Pars is more important than having it in his possession.

Is it possible that he will try and return the sword to Kaykhusraw's mausoleum instead? Sure, Zahhak is out already but maybe it will quell the earthquakes. This would set up nicely for a scene that is the inverse of Hilmes taking Rukhnabad from the sarcophagus, where Arslan instead tries to replace it and in the process of doing so proves himself worthy of wielding it.

And if Team Arslan try to place it in the sarcophagus itself (assuming they can still access it after the big earthquake back then?) they'll see the absence of Kaykhusraw's body and understand it has become a vessel for Zahhak.

(I feel like I want that realisation saved for Hilmes, though. He's seen Kaykhusraw's remains before, and I want him to see them again and realise what he's done... Sure, multiple parties can come to the same conclusion but I feel like that would be a great one off moment of 'oh FUCK')

That's the first half of the chapter. You know what, I'm going to split my post into two parts, so stay tuned for the next one.

Ashaya backstory revamp

Ever since classes started again I have been consistently unable to either draw or write, and it's frustrating me a lot, so I'll just have to settle for making AU posts.

Andragoras and Tahamenay's child, that has not changed.

Given to some family in the Tabaristan region (formerly known as Mazandaran in ancient times), who were given hush money in exchange of raising them.

Ever since she was young, Sherine has noticed that she is... different.

Her parents leave her out. Her siblings pick up on that and leave her out too. Her parents don't treat her the same way they treat their other children.

Besides which, Sherine is not dumb. She realizes pretty quickly that she looks different from the rest of her family. Face too pointy. Hair too light.

People say she's a beautiful child.

Her parents seem determined to prove them otherwise.

Sherine is given more chores to do. Given plainer clothes. Made to stand behind her siblings at any given event.

She cries. She screams and struggles and stomps and yells in hopes that they'd listen, they'd know, this is unfair, she's their daughter too, isn't she? Sherine is—

Sherine is not dumb.

Sherine knows that whatever she is, she doesn't belong here.

People say she's a beautiful child.

Her family says she's nothing but trouble.

She wanders her hometown, sneaking off from doing chores at home. Spends her days scanning the faces of the townspeople— the merchants, the neighbors, the strangers, even the slaves. She looks and looks and looks, for any hint of similarity, any bit of resemblance, anything that might echo back to what she sees in the mirror, in the waters, every day.

Sneaks out of her house, flits from street to street, in a desperate bid to find someone, anyone, with some iteration of her features hiding amongst the crowds.

Stalks the family of that jolly grape seller from a couple blocks over, because they were light-haired like her even if the shades don't even come close to matching.

Hers is always different.

Hers is too peculiar.

Ivory-blond with rosy tips, hair of an outsider.

Mama beats her and sends her to bed without dinner.

Curling up in bed, hungry in a way that no amount of food would satisfy, Sherine thinks.

She doesn't belong here.

She isn't a child of this family.

She doesn't think she's even related to them.

Where are her parents?

Did they die? Is that why papa and mama take her in? Because they knew her parents?

Except, really, they mustn't have loved her parents, whoever they were, because if they did then surely they would treasure Sherine too. Right?

Right?

If they died and nobody here loved them, then why is she here? Wouldn't she have been put on the doorsteps of a temple or taken from the streets by... by...

She'll never get the image out of her head, a slaver, flogging a young boy barely older than her.

She's seen them, on her escapades, prowling the streets sniffing around for any abandoned baby by a roadside or in an alleyway.

She shudders thinking about it. Mama always says one of these days she's going to sell Sherine, too.

She's scared.

She doesn't know.

Whatever the case was, she was unwanted in some way. Is unwanted, right now in this present she lives in, unwanted by this family, unwanted by whoever decided to leave their daughter on this doorstep.

She clutches her aching stomach.

She doesn't sleep.

Day by day, night by night, she prays what little words she manages to remember.

Prays to be loved.

Prays to be found.

Prays to be...

To be...

There's a tale in this town.

If you wander deep into the woods, you'll find a dilapidated place.

They call it a temple. That's stupid. The building looks nothing like a temple.

Those who wander in, they say, come back wrong.

Come back days, months, years later.

No matter how long they take, they don't look a day older.

They were playing, her siblings and the other kids, they play, but she never gets included. They get mean when she tries. They always give her whatever's the worst.

She runs.

She runs and runs and runs until her legs burn and there's no air in her lungs.

She doesn't notice the butterflies frozen in air.

She doesn't notice the sudden stillness of the trees after a certain point.

Not until she trips.

There, on the ground, stained in mud and dirt and snot and tears, she curls up like she always does at night.

She's so hungry.

She hears their voices, a couple bushes over, arguing about the prey they were supposed to hunt.

They don't find her.

She bolts upright, startled, nerves tingling with something she doesn't know what to name.

She looks around.

Silence and stillness.

She should be afraid, she thinks. She should try to leave. To go home, to go find those dummies who didn't even see her when they were nearby.

But she thinks of their meanness, of mama's anger and papa's weird stares, of the prowling slavers wandering the streets.

Just a little bit, she thinks. Just a little longer. Just a little bit of peace. She'll take the beatings later, she'll deal with that when they catch her.

That's right.

She just has to not get caught for a little while longer.

[brain juices running out so this will be reverting back from story mode to summary mode, augh]

Anyways, she spends a long time (to her) in the woods and doesn't really notice that the sun isn't moving in the sky bc she's a little kid and she's too busy rolling around and having fun until she falls asleep out of exhaustion (both physical and emotional, since all the shit she went through finally caught up to her in a safe moment)

(you'll notice that in the story/narration part “Sherine” refers to themselves by she/her bc at the time they hadn't had the chance to realize y'know, the gender stuff)

Sherine wakes up, finds that it's night, and she can't find her way back.

(the haunted area actually booted her out so she's in a different spot of the forest)

Kid has an epiphany of sorts.

“She can't stay here.

Not anymore.

If she's so unwanted anyways, what harm would it do for her to disappear?

For her to leave?”

So she does.

Anyways, it's night, Farangis (with some clan adults) is wandering the area for a reason I have yet to fully decide on.

They meet.

Sherine is absolutely taken by this gorgeous lady.

One long conversation later while Farangis does her best to clean the kid up, it's abundantly clear that Sherine is Not Okay.

So they get taken!

And Sherine gets to chop off their hair and choose a new name.

But until she settles on a proper name she chose for herself, their temporary name is Ranna.

Sherine has a complicated relationship with girlhood because of the toxic standards that were forced on her by their “parents”.

Anyways that's how Ashaya comes to join the clan!

What I imagine a young ex-Sherine to look like as she leaves with Farangis.

Fun fact, Areyan is usually a sweet and gentle kid but for some unknown reason he and Ashaya regularly gets into fisticuffs.

They're 7 when they join the clan. Farangis is 15, she'd just come of age.

At some point I kinda wanted Ashaya and Alfarīd to have met in their younger years but I don't see that working out w this trajectory sooooo... oops.

Anyways, a look into Ashaya's trauma! Where their lack of hope and faith in the world stems from. I somehow couldn't get into it in the narration but her family house could own slaves, maybe, (still she gets made to do chores bc Double Standards), and on her escapades to find her parents or relatives in the town she gets to see a whoooole lot of violence thrown at slaves and poor commoners and it always stuck w them.

She tries questioning it once, they got punished.

Kinda echoes Alfarīd's hopelessness in the nation too, she did say in the manga “there's no point to restoring the nation, it'll just make new nobles and new slaves” and it's an attitude Ashaya holds, too.

It'll be up to them to find that hope again. Alfarīd would be the one to eventually give back hope to Ashaya, but for that she herself will have to believe.

Unlike in canon I don't really see Alfarīd coming to believe in someone changing the system, rather that there's something worth living for even in a broken world. I think she'd have an attitude like that. It just fits her.

(I'm reminded of the song Kamado Tanjirou no Uta from the AU playlist, and that one video from Hello Future Me about the Ghibli movie The Boy and the Heron.)

(“We did not choose this world. But we must live in it.”)

To elaborate on why Ashaya lost faith in the world, it's smth like, if something so terrible and hurtful like the slavery system is allowed to exist, if nobody batted an eye at the abuse she went through, if nobody thinks to hold abusers accountable, if people are rewarded with brutality for their kindness, then... there's nothing worth saving here.

In addition to their own abuse they also saw others being abused, remember that the clan is made up of runaways and hurt people and abandoned people and victims and survivors— almost nobody who comes to the clan... came from happiness.

Is it any wonder that their faith was broken?

In contrast, let's look at Alfarīd. Protective instincts, strong sense of justice, responsible if a bit chaotic, remember how in the manga Alfarīd urges Estelle to remember the women and children and injured they'd saved? That they must think of, that they must protect, instead of thinking about the King?

Alfarīd, I think, abhors the system, but still sees people and things worth protecting anyways.

(and not to jump all over like a kangaroo but let's talk about Farangis this time)

She's an orphan. She entered the temple of Mithra after her loss. She was too talented. Too diligent. Too beautiful. People shunned her because of it.

And I'm willing to bet there's aggression and subtle bullying, too.

Look, it's a closed community. That sort of place gets rancid real fast.

(I would know. I myself was trapped in a prison of a boarding school where my suicidal ideation got wayyyyyyy bad.)

So, y'know, Ashaya-as-Sherine is a reflection of her days in the temple. That's why she has a soft spot for her.

Farangis is one of the few people Ashaya will listen to.

Anyways that concludes thus the post about Ashaya!